Promoter Eddie Hearn believes he’s signed a potentially “unbeatable” future “global star” with his recent addition of Shakur Stevenson to his Matchroom promotion.
High-pressure Auditions
With Hearn over-praising Shakur, it puts him in a high-pressure situation for his October 12th match for the promoter against former IBF super featherweight champion Joe Cordina. For a fighter like Shakur, who has repeatedly turned in lackluster performances in his last three fights, Hearn is putting him in a tough position where he’s got to try and live up to the glazing.
The 2016 Olympic silver medalist Shakur has signed a two-fight deal with Hearn, which clearly means he’ll have to impress to be signed to a lucrative long-term deal. These two first fights will be auditions for Shakur, where he’ll need to act entertainingly.
Stevenson will probably lose one of the two fights, and Hearn will wash his hands of him, realizing that he’s not who he thought he was. He has a good amateur style, but it’s only effective against non-punchers.
We saw his limitations when he fought the sluggers Edwin De Los Santos and Jeremiah Nakathila. Stevenson was forced to run all night in those contests and was booed loudly by the fans for his failure to stand and fight.
Shakur isn’t an entertaining fighter unless he’s matched against a slow, weaker opponent, like when he fought Jamel Herring and Shuichiro Yoshino.
Unfavorable Matchups
- Joe Cordina: A gimme for Shakur’s first of his twp-fight deal with Matchroom.
- William Zepeda: This is the fight where the wheels could come off for Shakur because he’s got a fighter with a high-pressure style that he’s always struggled against. Shakur won’t be able to stand and fight Zepeda like he did his last opponent, Artem Harutyunyan, because he has too much power and throws too many shots. It’s possible that Shakur will get beaten and be in the same boat as Devin Haney.
Shakur faces Joe Cordina on October 12th, with them fighting on the undercard of Artur Beterbiev vs. Dmitry Bivol in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Cordina, 32, will not do much to increase Shakur’s popularity, no matter how good he looks in this fight. The former IBF super featherweight champion Cordina (17-1, 9 KOs) lost his last fight to 35-year-old Anthony Cacace by an eighth-round knockout on May 18th.
If the idea was to match Shakur against a UK fighter from the 130-lb division, Hearn should have used Cacace rather than Cordina. It still wouldn’t make sense if the goal is to turn Shakur into a global star,” but at least he would be facing someone coming off a win instead of a knockout loss.
“I know how good this kid is. He may be unbeatable. I know he’s a pound-for-pound star,” said Eddie Hearn to the Matchroom Boxing YouTube channel, glazing Shakur Stevenson’s potential. “There’s something about Shakur’s mentality that gives me confidence that he beats everybody.
“I think he’s been massively undersold and should be not only an American superstar but a global superstar,” said Hearn about Shakur.
Hearn sees something in WBC lightweight champion Shakur (22-0, 10 KOs) that suggests he’s on the brink of stardom and believes he can bring that out. I don’t think he can. Shakur is too limited as a fighter and goes out of his way not to exchange with his opponents.
Hearn will look like a genius if he can transform Shakur into the second coming of Floyd Mayweather Jr, but it doesn’t seem likely. Floyd was entertaining right out of the gate when he turned pro. He didn’t become boring to watch until later in his career when he got old and adopted the safety-first style that Shakur uses today.
His hit-and-run style doesn’t work for building a “global star” or even a local, national one in the U.S. If Shakur were a must-see TV, Top Rank would have never let him get away. They would have paid him a goldmine to stay, but they didn’t; the reason is obvious. He’s boring, and fans don’t want to watch him.
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